Video clips of entropic sieving of DNA molecules

J. Han and H. G. Craighead

School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University

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Following is the video clips showing the motion of DNA molecules in our entropic sieving channel. Appropriate viewers like this should be installed in your computer to see these movies.

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Real time video of lambda phage DNA (48.5 kbps) motion in the entropic sieve channel. The original 30 frame per second (fps) video signal was digitized at 6 fps and contrast-enhanced by a computer. The brighter regions in the channel are the thick regions, which is 1.4 µm deep. Thin regions (darker regions) are 90 nm deep. The length of each thick or thin regions is 10 µm. DNA is moving faster in the thin region because electric field is higher. One can see the DNA deformation and stretching when it enters a thin region.
Click here to see this clip without the plug-in.

Motion of individual T2 (164 kbps) and T7 (37.9 kbps) DNA molecules in the channel. (real time, frame rate : 3 fps, thick region : 650 nm, thin region : 90 nm) The right channel is 4 µm period channel, where one can see the larger T2 DNA is catching up other four smaller T7 DNA. Compare the speed of the big one near the above edge of the field, with that of other small T7 DNAs. The length of vertical field of this image was 140 µm, and the average electric field was 45.5 V/cm.
Click here to see this clip without the plug-in.

Last modified 17 March 1999

Back to the DNA entropic sieving page

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